


10 Household Staples You Must Have On Hand

by hishn_greywalker



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 14:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3330239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hishn_greywalker/pseuds/hishn_greywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aka the fic where Steve Rogers is still a 30's househusband at heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	10 Household Staples You Must Have On Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Written a year ago, and then both me and the beta forgot it. But we remembered it! Thanks, b. Post Avengers, Pre CA:WS. Also plays fast an loose with anything in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Written because I am pretty sure Steve Rogers is okay with More! Better! Food, but pretty unimpressed with the fact that nobody can feed themselves if it is not already in a can. First Avengers fic, and first fic in the marvel world since before x-men 2 came out. Enjoy!

Steve doesn't really notice, that first summer. He wakes up 70 years past due and is thrust into battle within two weeks. He saves New York—again—and is then given quarters at S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ in DC.

At S.H.I.E.L.D., he has a room with a bathroom. In the room is a bed, a desk and a bookshelf. There's no kitchen, and Steve isn't sure where he could find a hotplate in modern day DC.

So he eats at the cafeteria while he's there. He spends a lot of that first summer on the road, visiting old friends and old friend's graves. Jones is alive, though he doesn't remember much about the war. Or his life. Steve spends a few nights on his couch, and his daughter tells him her son—Antoine—is now working for S.H.I.E.L.D.. The way she so casually remarks about it lets Steve know that she, too, was in S.H.I.E.L.D..

Dugan is still around. He lives in New York with a son. He had four of them, and two daughters, all the while serving beside Peggy as S.H.I.E.L.D. was formed. Dugan has a lot to say about Nick Fury.

Later, that Dugan trusts Fury inexplicitly will matter. It doesn't then.

Falsworth is buried in Arlington, next to Morita and Dernier. There are empty graves beside them, marked James Barnes and Steve Rogers. There are two empty slots on the other side, and Steve knows the names they will read eventually.

Steve sees Peggy regularly, though he's not sure she remembers day to day. She knows who he is, and nurse tells him it's because he looks just like he did when she can still remember. She might not remember the last 60 years, but she knows him. It hurts a little, that four out of five times he shows up, she bursts into tears.

And then, Steve doesn't have anyone left to visit. He's in Brooklyn, in a diner that claims to have been there since the 20s (it hasn't—it was a market in the 30s) when he realizes it's mid October. The fall harvest is in, even is the shops he's been to don't talk about it or advertise much other than a lot of pumpkins.

Steve doesn't know how Tony finds out he's in New York, but he does, and Steve is asked-begged-hounded into staying in Stark-now-Avengers tower. Steve has an opulent apartment there, one that is a whole floor. Every room but the bedroom and the bathroom has floor to ceiling windows. The furniture is what Pepper calls "understated" and Steve sees as far to rich.

The kitchen is amazing. The stove is gas, which Steve has seen but never used. It has to be better than the electric-coil stove that Steve remembers as something only rich people have. He's pretty decent on a coal or wood stove, but he isn't sure how something as simple as an electric stove can vary temperatures so radically.

Steve cooks when he can, but he spends a lot more time exploring the new New York and all it has to offer. He eats Thai and Chinese and Pho. He picks up used recipe books from sidewalk sales and learns how to make his favorite dishes.

He's still a little unsure about _buying_ everything. He doesn't understand how no one prepares their own food anymore, how even when people say they made something from scratch, it's really from a box or a can.

Natasha makes pancakes on Sunday. Steve watches her make them the second time, because he wants to know her recipe. Her recipe is to pour something from a box and add water.

The next Sunday, he meets her in the communal kitchen before she can get started. "We're making these from scratch today," he tells her.

Pancakes are super simple. He made sure they have all the ingredients, and he shows her the right proportions. He doesn't use a measuring cup because he and Bucky had never owned one. His mother had had one, once upon a time, but he had never found it when he gathered their things. Mrs. Morris from across the hall had probably snuck in and taken what she'd wanted during his mother's service. It would have been just like her.

Steve tells Natasha about how pancakes were a luxury that he and Bucky worked for. If he made a little extra at the news stand, or if Bucky got some extra hours, they'd splurge on pancakes. And in the summer, it was always pancakes with strawberries.

The next Sunday they're all together, which is nearly a month later, Natasha makes the pancakes from scratch. This time there are strawberries on the table.

Steve eats them, because he knows it was for him, but as soon as he goes back downstairs, he googles 'fresh strawberry season'. Tony has been teaching him about how to use google to answer his questions about the future. Google tells him Strawberries are still June –August, but that people are tricking and forcing the fruit to be available all year, which is how they got them in December.

It also tells him this is why they didn't taste near as delicious as he remembered.

Steve starts to look up information about food. He learns a lot, and it mostly makes him sad for everyone. He and Bucky hadn't had much, but what they had had wasn't going to kill them.

There is a diner not too far from Avenger Tower. Steve goes there when he can't sleep at night, and it's not long before the waitress who works most nights gets to know him. She's a student at NYU, so forth the night shift. A lot of times, if it's slow, she lays her books out in Steve's booth and does homework while he reads.

Steve reads a lot—he was a reader before, but there'd been so few books. Now, he reads every book he can get his hands on and has found out that he can download books onto his tablet.

The waitress, Nicole, brings him all of the books from her past English lit classes. She laughs when he offers them back, and tells him to pass them on to someone else.

It's nearly May when he asks her about canning, and her eyes light up. "Oh, my roommate and I, we love canning. He's the cook, Josh." She waves towards the back. "Hey, JOSH! Say hi," she yells.

A guy with three earrings and a nose ring leans out of the back of house and waves, "Hey!"

He barely even looks at Steve, which is half the reason Steve comes to this diner. The staff are all friendly in a normal way, not in a 'You're Captain America' way.

Nicole leans across the table. "Josh is so totally gay, which is the best part about living with him. But he makes _the best pumpkin pie_."

Which is how Steve learns about gay rights, and about Stonewall, and about legalizing Gay Marriage. And also about canning in the 21st century, and how no one but grandmas did it for a while, but how it was coming back.

A few nights later, Josh comes out from the back when it's just him, Nicole and Steve. He has a pumpkin pie with him, and a jar of pumpkin. The jar looks just like the old Ball cans he'd used every fall.

The pumpkin pie is good, if a little sweet. "How much sugar do you use in your reduced milk?" Steve asks.

Josh blushes. "I maybe just use a can of Carnation condensed milk," he admits.

Steve grins. "Don't worry, we used it in my day, too. Just too sweet for my tastes," he tells them. He leans in, like he's telling them a secret. "Buck would have loved yours more than mine—the more sugar the better, in his world."

Over the next while, the three of them swap recipes and canning ideas and Steve talks about making applesauce for all occasions. They also swap their favorite websites for these things—the winners are pioneerwoman.com and food52.com.

In August, Steve picks Josh up from his and Nicole's dinky apartment and two of them go out to Brooklyn for a Saturday of rummage sailing. They score a lot of jars, though not so many lids, so they head to a hardware store for more.

It's another lesson in the 21st century that these things may or may not be found at the grocery store, and that people are definitely going to think they're weird for canning.

They end their day at a bar near the diner, where Josh has to go to work soon. "To canning," Josh says, holding up his beer.

"To canning," Steve returns. He's still not sure Josh should be drinking before his job, but who is he to say. He's not even sure it's frowned upon now.

(He googles it later—it is.)

In September, Steve starts canning. He goes to a local market and buys fruits and veggies and comes back to the tower with his haul.

He starts that night, with the easy things. Canning beans is easy, toss them in with water and then seal them up. He shells peas and chops carrots and does those next.

The next day he makes soup, and puts that into freezer safe jars. Josh had explained how all new Ball small jars were freezer safe, but the older ones weren't always. Steve isn't sure how some glass was and some wasn't freezer safe, but he lets it go.

He slices and bakes pumpkin, then bakes the seeds while he is pureeing the pumpkin. Natasha wanders in then.

"You missed pancakes," she tells him, sliding onto a bar stool and watching him. He has a lot of pumpkin to puree—it'd taken all morning to bake.

"Sorry," he tells her. "I wanted to get an early start."

She doesn't say anything, and when Steve looks up, she's watching him in fascination. "Want to help?" he asks.

Which is how he winds up with Hawkeye and the Black Widow helping him can foods.

He makes hummus, which is something Nicole introduced him to, and he makes salsa and tomato sauce. He makes more soups—five in total—and he makes lasagna and freezes it. He cans peaches and pears and strawberries and blueberries and blackberries.

He makes jellies and jams, too, and Natasha convinces him to try blueberry jalapeño jelly. It turns out it's pretty good.

Two weeks into the endeavor, Bruce joins them. "I did research," he tells them. "You can't keep canned squashes at room temp."

Steve frowns. "We always did."

Bruce shrugs. "They decided it has to be frozen now."

Steve puts the pumpkin the freezer, but he googles it later.

Bruce is totally right.

Tony gets wind of it a few days later. "Cap, my capsicle," he starts, which Steve doesn't cringe at, because he's making applesauce, which is a lot of stirring, so he can ignore Tony if he needs to.

"Why are you going to the trouble? If you were hungry, Jarvis can order in for you," Tony tells him, poking at the dirty bowl he'd made sweet and sour sauce in earlier.

"Yes, but it would be full of God-know-what and be sourced from God-known-where," Steve tells him.

Tony pouts, but doesn't tell him he's wrong.

The next day, Steve bakes. He bakes an approximation of the "snack" bars that the whole team goes through by the crate. He puts in oatmeal and homemade granola and raisins and blueberries and strawberries he'd been drying for a few days. He puts in homemade peanut butter, and then makes one batch with homemade nutella for Natasha and Nicole. The two girls had never met, and had little in common except for their love of nutella.

And then, in the end, he bakes pies with any leftover fruit. He bakes an apple pie that the entire team fights over the last piece of, and a blueberry cream pie Bucky would have loved.

His favorite is the peach pie.

"I never had a peach before I woke up," he tells the team. "They were expensive, and Bucky always went for the stuff we knew we'd like, when he had extra money. We got some pears once, though, and I canned them for Christmas morning."

"Did you can a lot?" Natasha asks, and it's the first time in the month they've been canning that anyone has asked.

Steve shrugs. "Well, I couldn't work very well, before. So I worked at a News Stand in the morning, and then sometimes in the evening. But in the day I got dinner going and I canned and baked. I made a little extra by cooking for some of the mothers when they had troubles, or were pregnant or had just had another kid."

Steve leans back when he's finished his slice. "Lola Lawrence lived two doors down, and she just couldn't have a child. She and her husband tried, she said, but she and I worked to make meals for the other ladies for some money, or to do some of their darning or sewing. We made Mrs. Clayfield's second daughter's wedding dress, because Mrs. Clayfield had the whooping cough."

"So," Tony drawls, and Steve is expecting whatever Tony is about to say to hurt. "You cooked and cleaned and Barnes brought home the bacon?"

Steve frowns. "Once or twice, maybe. But bacon was expensive."

The whole table laughs at that. Steve grins, pretending he doesn't know why they're laughing.


End file.
